In the Flesh: Mad Men s2e08 'Six Month Leave'

“If I don’t go into that office every day,” says Freddy Rumsen (Joel Murray), “who am I?” It’s a question Don is clearly asking himself about his own absence from his household following his separation from Betty. What defines a person when routine falls away? Look at Betty, drifting listlessly through her own house, hair unstyled, clothes hanging from her slumped frame. Look at Don in his lonely hotel room, or Mona (Talia Balsam) after Roger abruptly ends their marriage of over thirty years. Work and family give these formless people the appearance of consistent shape, and without it they begin to show their emotional shortcomings, to resort to the same hapless flailing that drives them to substance abuse and serial infidelity. When Freddy says he doesn’t know who he is without the office, what he really means is that he doesn’t know who he is without alcohol. 

‘Six Month Leave’ opens with news of Marilyn Monroe’s death, and from the moment Don sees the headline, there’s a feeling that things aren’t quite on their axis anymore. Director Michael Uppendahl frames his characters in the lower corners of his shots, making them appear isolated and alienated from their surroundings. Betty looks like set dressing in her own bedroom, her limp hair blending with the wallpaper and skirting, her nightie matched to the bedspread. Outside the stables she’s a child next to towering, baby-faced Arthur Case (Gabriel Mann), her deft manipulation of him into a tryst with her riding partner Sarah Beth (Missy Yager) notwithstanding. In the absence of her own structuring routines and constraints, she forces others into crisis to maintain some semblance of self-knowledge. 

The rest of the episode looks like a collection of Edward Hopper daubs, buttery light and big shadows, crowds of people hunched and intent, waiting in exaggerated poses of expectation and conspiracy, as with the early shots of secretaries commiserating over Marilyn’s death. Don, Freddy, and Roger’s entire revel is as close as the show ever skirts to the literal territory of the other great Bad Man dramas, breezing past organized crime, illegal gambling, and neckless Italian doormen with superb confidence. Don’s embarrassed chuckle when he gives Rachel Menken’s husband’s name as his own at the club entrance takes us out of “night on the town” and into the realm of repressed fantasy, complete with a chance to deck his personal bogeyman, Jimmy Barrett (Patrick Fischler), in front of Floyd Mayweather. Beautiful.